W. Henstenberg: The
Lord’s Day. Transl. from the German by James
Martin, London, 1853. (Purely exegetical; defends the continental view,
but advocates a better practical observance.)

John T. Baylee: History
of the Sabbath. London, 1857. (See chs. X. XIII.)

James Aug. Hessey:
Sunday: Its Origin, History, and Present Obligation. Bampton
Lectures, preached before the University of Oxford, London, 1860.
(Defends the Dominican and moderate Anglican, as distinct both from the
Continental latitudinarian, and from the Puritanic Sabbatarian, view of
Sunday, with proofs from the church fathers.)

James Gilfillan: The
Sabbath viewed in the Light of Reason, Revelation, and History, with
Sketches of its Literature. Edinb. 1861, republished and widely
circulated by the Am. Tract Society and the "New York Sabbath
Committee," New York, 1862. (The fullest and ablest defence of the
Puritan and Scotch Presbyterian theory of the Christian Sabbath,
especially in its practical aspects.)

There is a very large Sabbath literature in the
English language, of a popular and practical character. For the
Anglo-American theory and history of the Christian Sabbath, compare the
author’s essay, The Anglo-American Sabbath, New York,
1863 (in English and German), the publications of the New York
Sabbath Committee from 1857–1886, the Sabbath
Essays, ed. by Will. C. Wood, Boston (Congreg. Publ. Soc.),
1879; and A. E. Waffle: The
Lord’s Day, Philad. 1886.

As every place, so is every day and hour alike sacred
to God, who fills all space and all time, and can be worshipped
everywhere and always. But, from the necessary limitations of our
earthly life, as well as from the nature of social and public worship,
springs the use of sacred seasons. The apostolic church followed in
general the Jewish usage, but purged it from superstition and filled it
with the spirit of faith and freedom.

1. Accordingly, the Jewish Hours of daily prayer, particularly in the morning
and evening, were observed as a matter of habit, besides the strictly
private devotions which are bound to no time.

2. The Lord’s
Day took the place of the Jewish Sabbath as the weekly
day of public worship. The substance remained, the form was changed.
The institution of a periodical weekly day of rest for the body and the
soul is rooted in our physical and moral nature, and is as old as man,
dating, like marriage, from paradise.688688Gen. 2:3. This passage is
sometimes explained in a proleptic sense; but religious
rest-days, dies
feriati, are found among most ancient
nations, and recent Assyrian and Babylonian discoveries confirm the
pre-Mosaic origin of the weekly Sabbath. See Sayce’s
revision of George Smith’s Chaldean Account of
Genesis, Lond. and N. York, 1881, p. 89: "If references to the Fall
are few and obscure, there can be no doubt that the Sabbath was an
Accadian [primitive Chaldaean] institution, intimately connected with
the worship of the seven planets. The astronomical tablets have shown
that the seven-day week was of Accadian origin, each day of it being
dedicated to the sun, moon, and five planets, and the word Sabbath
itself, under the form of Sabattu, was known to the Assyrians,
and explained by them as ’a day of rest for the
heart.’A calendar of Saints’ days for
the month of the intercalary Elul makes the 7th, 14th, 19th, 2lst, and
28th days of the lunar months, Sabbaths on which no work was allowed to
be done. The Accadian words by which the idea of Sabbath is denoted,
literally mean: ’a day on which work is
unlawful,’and are interpreted in the bilingual tablets
as signifying ’a day of peace or completion of
labors.’" Smith then gives the rigid injunctions which
the calendar lays down to the king for each of these sabbaths. Comp.
also Transactions of Soc. for Bibl. Archaeol., vol. V.,
427. This is implied in the
profound saying of our Lord: "The Sabbath is made for man."

It is incorporated in the Decalogue, the moral
law, which Christ did not come to destroy, but to fulfil, and which
cannot be robbed of one commandment without injury to all the rest.

At the same time the Jewish Sabbath was hedged
around by many national and ceremonial restrictions, which were not
intended to be permanent, but were gradually made so prominent as to
overshadow its great moral aim, and to make man subservient to the
sabbath instead of the sabbath to man. After the exile and in the hands
of the Pharisees it became a legal bondage rather than a privilege and
benediction. Christ as the Lord of the Sabbath opposed this mechanical
ceremonialism and restored the true spirit and benevolent aim of the
institution.689689Matt. 12:1 sqq., 10 sqq., and
the parallel passages in Mark and Luke; also John 5:8 sqq.; 6:23; 9:14,
16. When the slavish, superstitious, and
self-righteous sabbatarianism of the Pharisees crept into the Galatian
churches and was made a condition of justification, Paul rebuked it as
a relapse into Judaism.690690Gal. 4:10; Comp. Rom. 14:5;
Col. 2:16. The spirit of the pharisaical sabbatarianism with which
Christ and St, Paul had to deal may be inferred from the fact that even
Gamaliel, Paul’s teacher, and one of the wisest and
most liberal Rabbis, let his ass die on the Sabbath because he thought
it a sin to unload him; and this was praised as an act of piety. Other
Rabbis prohibited the saving of an ass from a ditch on the Sabbath, but
allowed a plank to be laid so as to give the beast a chance to save
himself. One great controversy between the schools of Shammai and
Hillel turned around the mighty question whether it was lawful to eat
an egg which was laid on the Sabbath day, and the wise Hillel denied
it! Then it would be still more sinful to eat a chicken that had the
misfortune to be born, or to be killed, on a Sabbath.

The day was transferred from the seventh to the
first day of the week, not on the ground of a particular command, but
by the free spirit of the gospel and by the power of certain great
facts which he at the foundation of the Christian church. It was on
that day that Christ rose from the dead; that he appeared to Mary, the
disciples of Emmaus, and the assembled apostles; that he poured out his
Spirit and founded the church;691691 The day of Pentecost (whether
Saturday or Sunday) is disputed, but the church always celebrated it on
a Sunday. See § 24, p. 241. and that he revealed to his beloved
disciple the mysteries of the future. Hence, the first day was already
in the apostolic age honorably designated as "the
Lord’s Day." On that day Paul met with the disciples
at Troas and preached till midnight. On that day he ordered the
Galatian and Corinthian Christians to make, no doubt in connection with
divine service, their weekly contributions to charitable objects
according to their ability. It appears, therefore, from the New
Testament itself, that Sunday was observed as a day of worship, and in
special commemoration of the Resurrection, whereby the work of
redemption was finished.692692John 20:19, 26; Acts 20:7; 1
Cor. 16:2; Rev. 1:10.

The universal and uncontradicted Sunday observance
in the second century can only be explained by the fact that it had its
roots in apostolic practice. Such observance is the more to be
appreciated as it had no support in civil legislation before the age of
Constantine, and must have been connected with many inconveniences,
considering the lowly social condition of the majority of Christians
and their dependence upon their heathen masters and employers. Sunday
thus became, by an easy and natural transformation, the Christian
Sabbath or weekly day of rest, at once answering the typical import of
the Jewish Sabbath, and itself forming in turn a type of the eternal
rest of the people of God in the heavenly Canaan.693693 Comp. Heb. 4:1-11; Rev.
4:18. In the gospel
dispensation the Sabbath is not a degradation, but an elevation, of the
week days to a higher plane, looking to the consecration of all time
and all work. It is not a legal ceremonial bondage, but rather a
precious gift of grace, a privilege, a holy rest in God in the midst of
the unrest of the world, a day of spiritual refreshing in communion
with God and in the fellowship of the saints, a foretaste and pledge of
the never-ending Sabbath in heaven.

The due observance of it, in which the churches of
England, Scotland, and America, to their incalculable advantage, excel
the churches of the European continent, is a wholesome school of
discipline, a means of grace for the people, a safeguard of public
morality and religion, a bulwark against infidelity, and a source of
immeasurable blessing to the church, the state, and the family. Next to
the Church and the Bible, the Lord’s Day is the chief
pillar of Christian society.

Besides the Christian Sunday, the Jewish
Christians observed their ancient Sabbath also, till Jerusalem was
destroyed. After that event, the Jewish habit continued only among the
Ebionites and Nazarenes.

As Sunday was devoted to the commemoration of the
Saviour’s resurrection, and observed as a day of
thanksgiving and joy, so, at least as early as the second century, if
not sooner, Friday came to be observed as a day of repentance, with
prayer and fasting, in commemoration of the sufferings and death of
Christ.

3. Annual festivals.
There is no injunction for their observance, direct or indirect, in the
apostolic writings, as there is no basis for them in the Decalogue. But
Christ observed them, and two of the festivals, the Passover and
Pentecost, admitted of an easy transformation similar to that of the
Jewish into the Christian Sabbath. From some hints in the Epistles,6946941 Cor. 5:7, 8; 16:8; Acts
18:21; 20:6, 16.
viewed in the light of the universal and uncontradicted practice of the
church in the second century it may be inferred that the annual
celebration of the death and the resurrection of Christ, and of the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit, originated in the apostolic age. In
truth, Christ crucified, risen, and living in the church, was the one
absorbing thought of the early Christians; and as this thought
expressed itself in the weekly observance of Sunday, so it would also
very naturally transform the two great typical feasts of the Old
Testament into the Christian Easter and Whit-Sunday. The Paschal
controversies of the second century related not to the fact, but to the
time of the Easter festival, and Polycarp of Smyrna and Anicet of Rome
traced their customs to an unimportant difference in the practice of
the apostles themselves.

Of other annual festivals, the New Testament
contains not the faintest trace. Christmas came in during the fourth
century by a natural development of the idea of a church year, as a
sort of chronological creed of the people. The festivals of Mary, the
Apostles, Saints, and Martyrs, followed gradually, as the worship of
saints spread in the Nicene and post-Nicene age, until almost every day
was turned first into a holy day and then into a holiday. As the saints
overshadowed the Lord, the saints’ days overshadowed
the Lord’s Day.

688Gen. 2:3. This passage is
sometimes explained in a proleptic sense; but religious
rest-days, dies
feriati, are found among most ancient
nations, and recent Assyrian and Babylonian discoveries confirm the
pre-Mosaic origin of the weekly Sabbath. See Sayce’s
revision of George Smith’s Chaldean Account of
Genesis, Lond. and N. York, 1881, p. 89: "If references to the Fall
are few and obscure, there can be no doubt that the Sabbath was an
Accadian [primitive Chaldaean] institution, intimately connected with
the worship of the seven planets. The astronomical tablets have shown
that the seven-day week was of Accadian origin, each day of it being
dedicated to the sun, moon, and five planets, and the word Sabbath
itself, under the form of Sabattu, was known to the Assyrians,
and explained by them as ’a day of rest for the
heart.’A calendar of Saints’ days for
the month of the intercalary Elul makes the 7th, 14th, 19th, 2lst, and
28th days of the lunar months, Sabbaths on which no work was allowed to
be done. The Accadian words by which the idea of Sabbath is denoted,
literally mean: ’a day on which work is
unlawful,’and are interpreted in the bilingual tablets
as signifying ’a day of peace or completion of
labors.’" Smith then gives the rigid injunctions which
the calendar lays down to the king for each of these sabbaths. Comp.
also Transactions of Soc. for Bibl. Archaeol., vol. V.,
427.

689Matt. 12:1 sqq., 10 sqq., and
the parallel passages in Mark and Luke; also John 5:8 sqq.; 6:23; 9:14,
16.

690Gal. 4:10; Comp. Rom. 14:5;
Col. 2:16. The spirit of the pharisaical sabbatarianism with which
Christ and St, Paul had to deal may be inferred from the fact that even
Gamaliel, Paul’s teacher, and one of the wisest and
most liberal Rabbis, let his ass die on the Sabbath because he thought
it a sin to unload him; and this was praised as an act of piety. Other
Rabbis prohibited the saving of an ass from a ditch on the Sabbath, but
allowed a plank to be laid so as to give the beast a chance to save
himself. One great controversy between the schools of Shammai and
Hillel turned around the mighty question whether it was lawful to eat
an egg which was laid on the Sabbath day, and the wise Hillel denied
it! Then it would be still more sinful to eat a chicken that had the
misfortune to be born, or to be killed, on a Sabbath.

691 The day of Pentecost (whether
Saturday or Sunday) is disputed, but the church always celebrated it on
a Sunday. See § 24, p. 241.